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92% of wine and spirits sales flow through local accounts. Delivering an exceptional brand experience at this critical stage of the path to purchase is challenging when competing for shelf and floor space. In this course, BrandMuscle will reveal the latest trends in POS formats and share best practices for scaling your POS more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably.
Robert R. Olivares, PhD,
serves as SVP of Vertical Growth, where he fosters partnerships, supports
innovation, and drives strategy among Beverage Alcohol customers for
BrandMuscle, the leader in integrated local and channel marketing. A graduate
of the University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Marketing, Olivares holds a
PhD in Organizational Leadership, an MBA in Business Management, and an
Executive Education Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing. Previously he worked as
Senior Vice-President of Corporate Marketing for Republic National Distributing
Company, one of the nation’s leading wholesale beverage alcohol distributors,
handling national account and supplier trade marketing, consumer insights,
multicultural marketing, and supporting key digital transformation initiatives.
As BrandMuscle’s first SVP of Vertical Growth, he applies his 25 years in CPG
and Beverage Alcohol experience to this matrixed leadership position, working
closely with key customers on design thinking, with BrandMuscle’s executive
board on strategic goals, with the Product team to define and develop
solutions, with the Marketing team on product messaging, and with BrandMuscle’s
client-facing teams on commercialization and implementation.
Gary Ortmann, BrandMuscle’s Executive
Vice President of Operations, has been a key player in the company since its
inception in 2000. A graduate of Triton College, where he earned an Associate
of Arts and Sciences degree focused in pre-press/desktop publishing and digital
imaging design, Ortmann brought 26 years of print and pre-press technology
experience to BrandMuscle after working at some of the largest firms in the
Chicago area. A strong operations professional, he held several positions
within the company, first with the enormous task of building the BrandMuscle
print solution, assembling our print network, and establishing our estimating
team. Once complete, he played a major role in the development of our applications
to support our distributor business, and he was a key strategic part of getting
our base distributor platform off the ground.
Brian Thomas, SVP of Strategic Sourcing,
is BrandMuscle’s print procurement specialist, bringing over a decade’s worth
of experience in production, sourcing, negotiation, and purchasing to the role.
A graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Thomas started his career
at BrandMuscle in 2008, as Graphic Operations Administrator at the company’s
busy Chicago print center, subsequently transitioning to the estimating team
and rising through the ranks to become Director of Procurement Operations. Tasked
with safeguarding the achievement of appropriate profit margins projects
sourced through a third-party manufacturer and RFx administrator, Thomas was
promoted to VP of Strategic Sourcing in 2017. There he oversaw the provisioning
and price management for all printing services within the BrandMuscle
organization. As SVP of Strategic Sourcing, Thomas acts as a primary advisor on
the advancement of BrandMuscle’s internal and client-facing print applications
and has cultivated and effectively maintained new executive level vendor
relationships, keeping the BrandMuscle print profile current with today’s
technology and sustainability practices.